Dennis Lehane, the youngest son of Irish immigrants, was born August 4, 1965, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, a working-class neighborhood of Boston. Growing up in Dorchester during the 1970s, the author witnessed his close-knit, insulated neighborhood undergoing some radical changes, sometimes violently, while still retaining its core values.

As a child, Lehane was an avid reader. He was attracted to writing by the time he was eight years old, and began creating short stories by the age of seventeen. After graduating from high school, he attended two colleges in Boston, Emerson College and the University of Massachusetts, but dropped out of both.

In 1985, Lehane finally found a program that suited him. He moved to Florida to study writing at Eckhard College. In 1986, while a student there, he took a job that would inspire his later work. He became a counselor at a state facility for children that were emotionally...